Some people already submitted this news last week, but it wasn't until today that it became official: the FreeBSD team has announced the release of FreeBSD version 9.0. As you may expect from the major version number change, this is releas eis packed with new stuff.

The project needs an up to date and maintainable compiler/toolchain that meets the projects requirements and with GCC past 4.2.1/binutils past 2.17 that is no longer possible. It's a much bigger issue than just some companies having an issue with GPL'd code.

Stop with the bs, the ONLY reason the BSD's didn't upgrade past 4.2.1 is because of the GPLv3 licence and as others have already stated this was because of companies supporting BSD having a 'no GPLv3 policy' (most likely due to the TIVO-ization clause).

Also this relates to what the BSD's ship with, all later GCC versions have been readily available through ports so those who have no problem with GPLv3 and wants to enjoy benefits of later versions like better optimization/faster compilation can get them.